uncertainty
by Riya3
Summary: Projected pathological narcissism. Sasuke-centric. Uchihacest. And Anko.


**Propagating Uncertainty - **_**Projected pathological narcissism. Sasuke-centric. SasuIta. **_

_Warnings: Uchihacest. And Anko. Not at the same time, though. That would be far too interesting for anyone's tastes._

_So a friend of mine seems to have gotten into ItaSasu, and recommended me some of the well-written fics of that ship. And then she oh-so-eloquently asked me to write 'kinky stuff'. And so I hereby present you with said 'kinky stuff', which is probably (disappointingly?) far less 'kinky' than normal 'kinky stuff' (and also probably uses out-of-context ideas that psych has fascinated me with). _

_(And by 'propagating', I naturally also mean it's very opposite ^^)_

_Inspiration: ''l'allegoria' by PureWaterLily. Short, but nice._

.

(Some of the clan members notice it from a young age: the two of of them are different yet versions of each other at once.)

When he is five, Sasuke tries to grow his hair long like his brother's.

It's an involuntary thing, born from a misplaced sense of the Uchiha pride that runs strong in his blood. He monitors the growth for a month, carefully planting the first stone in the _house_ of his slow and all-consuming obsession.

He gives up when Shisui-nii comes by informs him that he looks like a little girl, which he maintains is absolutely unfair because nii-san is more graceful than an infiltration kunoichi and has hair sweeping his waist and he doesn't look a thing like a girl. His mother smiles and says it's fine, she's always wanted a daughter anyway.

Sasuke has his hair cut short again. Instead, in a sudden change of plan he sneaks into Itachi's room at night with a pair of scissors in hand and a goal in mind, and it's too bad his brother has the senses of an anbu and wakes up immediately, because with all his childish wisdom he can't help but think nii-san would look better with short hair.

.

Narcissism - love of oneself.

_(But maybeprobably not)._

_. _

Sasuke hears the word at the age of fifteen, first uttered by Sakura who yells it at him shrilly when he points out her flaw of annoyance for the ninth time that week. She storms away, leaving it behind in his mind like evidence that she was there in his life, more than an image.

It's a cruel word but he begins to wear it like a charm around his neck, like an ornament that does nothing but shows off exquisite collarbones jutting from proudly umarked skin.

.

Months later when the dobe leaves to train with his perverted old man and Sakura wipes him from her mind and sets herself down their new Godaime's path, Anko is the one who lures him in with her neon smile. She's seen him reject Orochimaru's path and somehow that rings nostalgic so she trains him in a routine few others can survive.

Anko does it because they're similar in a way, but once he turns sixteen she no longer hesitates to leer slightly and tell him she wants him. But he keeps training with her, not because he's genuinely unaware of his own appeal but because he doesn't care what she thinks. She's like Sakura in his mind, outside of her teaching. They'll all take their piece of him and he'll take his piece in return and try his best to make sure each slice is of the same size.

In the day she gives him the cruel lessons her Sannin sensei once gave her because it helps him build endurance and speed and psychological resilience until he surpasses her. But even then, Anko continues to teach because her strange tragedy of a past means she knows far more than she can perform.

And in the night when he's pleasingly tired she fucks every last thought of hesitance from his body, stripping him raw for her eyes. But he's no longer too young and he needs the power she can guide him to, so he pays the crude price willingly. From her words it seems that he would have had it worse if he'd taken _Orochimaru's_ once-offered hand, so it's fine to let her lead him to her room and push him into her sheets and guide him with insistent fingers in how to move.

"There isn't a single scar on you," Anko remarks, letting her hungry eyes drink in her student's form. Harsh moonlight illuminates every crevice of his body and confirms her suspicions. "How the hell did you make it to chunin without getting any scars? You don't even have kunai-practice scars on your fingers."

"When I was young, my brother would take me to get them healed," Sasuke replies uninterestedly. _Because_ that man_ hadn't like to see him hurt, the bastard. _"Now I'm good enough to avoid them."

He remembers _Itachi's_ body, a storyboard of marks and bruises that collectively told the tale of his life (whatever of it they'd all known). He remembers how his brother took him to the onsen, – long before anbu consumed him – when he'd soak the warm water into the depth of his bones and expose his map of scars to the late evening sun.

When she tugs him to her room again the next week, there's a thin pink still-healing mark over the cap of his right knee, worn with the utilitarianism of a collector building his set piece by piece. Anko doesn't comment.

Instead she occupies herself with being openly confused at his silence.

"Hey, why don't you enjoy this like a normal kid your age?" She asks with a tilt of her head. "I haven't even got a yell out of you."

Sasuke shrugs and looks up at her with his hair splayed over the wrinkled sheets, "it's nice."

"_Nice_?!" Anko's voice turns incredulous, "just _nice_? That's an insult to my skill!" She grips him with renewed vigor and he hisses but it's not nearly as loud as she wants.

"Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong," she says with a sudden grin. Sasuke lifts himself up to his elbows on the futon and peers down with one eyebrow raised as he feels the pressure of her form shift upwards. He watches blankly when she slips a hand between his legs.

"Maybe you'll like it better this way."

Her finger is hilted deep inside him, sudden and rough and merciless and it moves in, out, in again. He arcs violently off the sheets, pushes into her hand, draws her closer and crashes her smiling mouth to his.

.

Even after his training with Anko ends, the questions linger in his mind with heightening intensity. One month after the dobe has returned from his training, Sasuke meets him at the training grounds, grabs his hand, and pulls him to his apartment, shutting the door behind them in an action that's so reminiscent of Anko that he wonders how far his crazy second sensei has truly rubbed off on him.

"Hey, I'm not into this," Naruto informs him jerkily as he's pushed down onto the bed.

"I know. We're not going to fuck, ok?" Fingers slip under his belt. "Be my experiment."

"Oi Sasuke, what the hell are you-"

"That means, shut up and let me do this."

When he kneels down at the harsh wooden edge of the bed and blows his teammate with enough vigor to make him moan brilliantly and dig nail-shaped marks into the rough sheets below them, he feels his lips curve into a smile. It's not Naruto he wants (and Naruto doesn't want him anyway, even through he enjoys it, the dobe).

It's the weight in his mouth, the lean muscular form writhing below him, the guttural cries that penetrate the air of the barely-used room from a voice just almost there, almost as low, almost as good. If it could only be a little smoother, it would be perfect.

.

_I want _him_. _A fisted hand later jammed against a wall bruised black and red. _Did oka-san drop me often as a kid?_ _Did that pervert sensei (the both of them!) rub off on me? Or did_ his_ Mangekyou really fuck up my head that badly? __What ... what the hell is wrong with me?_

It's the wall that's bruised (and not his fist).

.

Every lingering thread of uncertainty is swiftly snapped when the new Hokage calls him to her office and tells him the truth. Sasuke stands before her desk, eyes averted, listening calmly as she unravels his life piece by coated piece.

"I dragged it out of Danzo," she finishes, voice still husky with the strain of sake. "I can't do anything about it now since it was fully approved by those old hags that call themselves my council, but I thought you'd want to know."

There aren't any anbu in the office at that moment, which is rare in itself, so it's said in absolute secrecy. This Senju somehow feels responsible for him. As if her hand was the one that guided his shitty fate. Sasuke nods wordlessly and suppresses the urge to cry like the kid he tries not to be.

_Wait for me. I'll find you, wherever the hell you are._

But there's a characteristic knot in her brow, and he gestures impatiently for her to go on. Her next words are said with a quiet kind of horror – but horror nonetheless – and he understands why she's told him everything right _then_. While she still could. Because shinobi aren't fit for procrastination.

"Don't have me followed," Sasuke tells her before leaving the room, the building, the village. He knows all too well why he's torn between shock and undiluted ecstasy and it shames him to the bone, until there's nothing left to tear at his mind anymore, nothing that can push him any further.

.

He meets Kisame in a tea place at the borders of Kiri. It's not one bit of quaint, it's suffocating and has the type of atmosphere that clings to him and makes him itch to scrub himself raw. But he settles calmly across the table from his brother's Akatsuki partner.

"You know who I'm here for."

"I know." A grin revealing shining sharp teeth, a face fitted with alkaline skin. "He's gone to see you."

"Where?"

Fishlike eyes survey him. "Why should I tell you?"

"If he left to see me, he'll send a message for me to be there anyway. Might as well help your partner out, right?"

Silence clouds the musty air as Kisame considers it leisurely. Finally, he responds in his curiously wavering voice, "it would be better if he doesn't fight you. He's been sick recently. Coughing up blood when I'm not looking."

Sasuke shoves it down, resists the urge to smile or kill. "Sick? And I suppose you're worried that I'll kill him. Honor among missing-nin?"

Kisame shrugs, "I wouldn't want to lose a good-looking kid like him. Even while sick he's great in bed. Doesn't respond much, but he's never resisted either." He sees the sudden anger and his grin widens. "Your brother may be powerful, but he knows his place well in an organization like ours."

He realizes with a lurch of his stomach that he was never as good at control as nii-san was. The small building bursts into a blur of white and red, of tattered Uchiha pride, of distorted self-love embodied in the bloodied form he leaves behind to stain the floor. When the haze settles, Sasuke walks out and shakily wipes the thick blue liquid off his hands.

.

The old Uchiha hideout is a cruel building, filled with the suffocating stench of guilt that seeps through his airway and burns its walls until the words he's carefully prepared _stick _to the clotted blood in his throat. Sasuke feels it keenly when he walks inside and sees Itachi settled into the cold stone chair. He narrowly resists the urge to cough.

His brother's face is pale and his hair is longer, trailing down brittle cheekbones to rest at the opening where his moonburnt skin meets the low neck of his cloak. They no longer look alike. Nothing but the darkness of their hair and the red of their eyes could proclaim them brothers, but that's fine with him because they're the same in another way, a way that's maybe far more intrinsic. Sasuke feels the warm thump of life slicken the blood in his own throat and he breathes again.

_I want him. _

Five seconds. The house is built, it rises tall from the foundation of crumbling uncertainty and there's no longer anything that can remove from it a single stone. His blades are tossed to the floor and his fingers are tangled into Itachi's long hair, at the back of his neck, tugging insistently, impatiently.

_I want him. _

Sasuke kisses him harshly, as if trying to suck his essence out through his mouth. His fingers skim over his brother's collarbone and pull heat to the surface where they touch.

"Sasuke," Itachi's breathy voice is nectar, smooth-flowing yet rough against the long curve of his jaw, spun out and viscous like he wants. Sasuke drinks it in eagerly, savoring the taste of the blood in the cavern of his mouth, the salt from Kiri's mist on his skin, the gritty sand of the building's ground woven into the fabric of his netted shirt.

What did it mean to love himself, and to love his self? The quandary presses insistently to the front of his mind but it's easily tossed to the side when Itachi relinquishes a single moan under his hands. For one brief second hesitation cloys the air with the sticky, dying breath of uncertainty.

"Shh, nii-san," a stern whisper, a self-indulgent tone of command that echoes through the old building and raises shivers down his arms. It's the only concession he'll allow. "I know," he says. "I know. We … we don't have much time. Neither of us does. Please."

And Itachi who would lead him to the edge of the world reaches forward, slips one shivering hand into his hair, and pulls Sasuke's mouth to his.

.

**(…So I just realized that Zetsu would have been watching this. I hereby claim credit for inadvertently inventing Voyeur!Zetsu.)**

**Explanation, since it's hard to capture in a 2,000 word fic:**

**Narcissism is very simple. In terms of love, it only means to love oneself at a far greater level than you could ever love anyone else. In particular, it's to love your own characteristics, your looks, your personality, all to an obsessive extent that prevents you from having a normal relationship with someone different. It also includes sexual desire for the self and the frustration of being unable to achieve it.**

But what if someone else had everything that you admire in yourself, and more? What if someone was that similar ("projected"), at least in your mind? Sasuke doesn't mind his own narcissism, he wears it openly. But he thinks about his brother's scars and for the first time he likes something in Itachi more than the corresponding thing in himself. He already has the base of brother-worship from his childhood, and thoughts of Itachi have been slowly breaking him out of his narcissism. He goes through the discoveries of his preference, what he wants, and then he finally learns the two truths:

Itachi is technically, ultimately innocent.  
Sasuke shares the same genetic disease (in canon, I suspect this is TB but I can't be sure)

This creates the last stand of similarity required to shift his obsession outwards, to project it onto his brother instead. He goes to seek reification.

**Feedback?**


End file.
